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Archive through April 22, 2001
Casebook Message Boards: The Diary of Jack the Ripper: General Discussion:
The Maybrick Diary-Archives 2001:
Archive through April 22, 2001
Author: Martin Fido
Saturday, 21 April 2001 - 04:43 pm |        | Of course it does, Alegria. I have no more confidence in some one signing himself 'Yours for Integrity' as self-appointed founder of a 'Committee for Integrity' than I would have in a used car dealer calling himself 'Honest John'and promising me 'An Honest Deal Every Time'.
But the last time we debated at length, we sinply had to agree to differ. And while I note with sympathy that you are now being plagued by anonymous postings which you dislike as much as I dislike anonymous postal deliverers, I hope we can affably agree to differ and leave it there once again.
Martin F |
Author: John Omlor
Saturday, 21 April 2001 - 04:55 pm | | Hi everyone,
Five posts ago (scroll up please), I ended my response to RJ with a PS that asked a few questions concerning where people think the case against Mike and/or Anne specifically as forgers now stands.
I think I wrote:
"PS: I know almost no one claims this diary is authentic anymore, and very few people seem to claim that it is a particularly old forgery. Would anyone here claim the case for Mike and/or Anne's complicity in this forgery has nearly enough evidence behind it to allow even for either of them to be held on suspicion, let alone for an actual arrest? Does anyone still claim that their complicity in the actual forgery has now been 'established beyond a reasonable doubt?' Just wondering about how established the case against them has become in people's minds."
I asked this because it seemed to me that the case against them is perhaps even less clear than it was only seventeen days ago, when I first saw in print someone arguing that in fact their complicity in the actual forging of this document had been just so established "beyond a reasonable doubt."
But where are we now?
Just for instance: did Mike's word processor have anything at all on it when it was "discovered?" Or was it a blank machine, as now seems possible, and without much evidentiary value minus the floppy disk with the transcription/composition of the diary text? If so, do we know if that disk was one of things Mike allegedly (according to his now problematic and possibly less than valid confession) sent to a family member to be destroyed, or did Mike hold onto that disk and was it used to produce the transcription copies eventually made available to Paul and Martin and co.? Do we know that this disk with this transcription is the source for these copies? If he did hold onto the disk, does this suggest that he did not think it was incriminating because he or Anne had in fact typed it from the already composed forgery? If he did not hold onto it, but sent it to a family member to be destroyed how do we know this? Is there any evidence either way at all? Is there any evidence of Mike or Anne's whereabouts and actions from around 1985 to 1991 that link them to the production of this diary in any way? Is Caz correct when she tells us that the only link between Kane and the Barretts is through Tony (who we are not even sure ever had the diary in any case, apparently) and even then it is a very indirect link suggested only because Kane's name appears on Tony's will? Do we know if Mike or Anne have ever even once met or even knew Kane? Karoline used the term "known associate." Is this relationship established in any way using any physical material or testimonial evidence at all?
Are Mike's lies about owning the word processor and his using an alias evidence of forgery or are they the bizarre actions of someone who had no idea what he was getting into and who lies apparently by habit? Has he told other lies for no apparent reason? Do Anne's changing set of narratives concerning the diary's provenance tell us anything at all about who wrote it or where or when and is this information backed up by any material, physical, or even testimonial evidence? Does Melvin really know who forged this thing? Does he even have any hard data and/or material evidence that would convince us that a case could be made against the forgers? Does he claim that Anne and Mike merely placed it without knowing it was a forgery or does he claim that they were complicit in its creation and does he still claim that the handwriting is Kane's? Is there any genuine physical, material, or testimonial evidence at all linking this diary directly to anyone, anywhere, at anytime before 1992 when Mike carried it into Doreen's office? Are Mike and Anne's stories and patterns of behavior after the diary was received publicly reliable evidence at all concerning the book's origins and creation? Does the science help us at all to link the book to any possible authors? Does it narrow down the time of composition, at least, for certain? Does the rhetoric of the book, it's structure and language indicate an author who used dramatic constructions and conventions popular in any specific time frame? Are there things in this book that might link it to the centennial and to the burst of publication on the topic that accompanied the centennial? Is there any other possible source for the Crashaw line than the Sphere volume and does Mike's copy of this book really have a "binding defect" that makes it open to precisely this page or was that "defect" the result of someone using the book either before or after the diary's composition and breaking down the spine at the relevant point? Can we know the answer to this with any certainty or even with any confidence yet? Did Mike order a Victorian diary as part of a burst of obsessive research once this strange book fell into his hands with the idea that he might write about the thing itself? Or did he order it to create the diary and after seeing it was unsuitable apparently hurried to find another more suitable volume and to send it and the text along to whomever penned the thing and then got them back and rushed off to Doreen's (wouldn't the relevant dates make this a fairly fast operation)? Can we decide on one of these two alternatives as any more likely than the other? Do we have any supporting physical or material evidence to support such a decision?
Do we know for sure that this book was at least definitely not, ever, in Battlecrease? Do we know, at least, that Mike and/or Anne could not have physically written this book, that their own handwriting does not match that of the book's author? Do Mike and/or Anne seem to have the ability to have organized, researched, created and conducted this forgery, at least in the eyes of those who have actually met and spoken with them personally? Does their behavior around the agents and their behavior after the book was challenged publicly and their personal choices in the whirlwind of the book's reception make the case for their participation in or even their manipulation of and organization of such a scheme from the outset more or even less likely? How would we know this and is there as of now any evidence at all of any real, physical or material or testimonial sort to support our decision, our answer to this question, to all of these questions.
In other words, where the hell are we? Or, to end where I began:
"Would anyone here claim the case for Mike and/or Anne's complicity in this forgery has nearly enough evidence behind it to allow even for either of them to be held on suspicion, let alone for an actual arrest? Does anyone still claim that their complicity in the actual forgery has now been 'established beyond a reasonable doubt?'"
Just wondering,
--John |
Author: Karoline L
Saturday, 21 April 2001 - 07:37 pm | | Well, Martin,
I'm afraid I once again have to agree with Alegria that your response really doesn't answer the important questions.
Your book singles out Harris for a personal attack of an incredibly damaging kind, yet you seem unwilling or unable to produce any evidence that would justify such an attack.
It would be more persuasive if you could quote some specific examples. Could you perhaps quote the offending references in Ripperana so we can all plainly see what you mean?
What you do provide thus far is a very obvious example of double standards. It seems that when people like Feldman falsely accuse Harris of tampering with evidence, and of "lacking integrity", then they are in your opinion, nice chaps who are getting a bit carried away. But when Harris describes a theory as "balderdash", you think he is demonstrating his unreliability and dishonesty!
You write:
"The statement I first made when attacked on these boards by Melvin - that he is unique in my experience as a Ripper writer who abuses his talents by sneering and jeering at other writers -remains true to my experience"
Well it may be true in your experience Martin - but in my experience I have to say that I have seen both you and Paul "sneering and jeering" at Melvin Harris right here on these boards, making jokes of a personal and derogatory nature that did no one any credit at all.
In fact it seems to be quite acceptable to say things to and about Harris that would be unthinkable if directed at anyone else. i don't think this is explicable entirely in terms of his own irascible manner. I think we are at risk of demonising him in unhelpful and extreme ways which will not further anyone's realistic understanding of the issues here.
For example, a few months ago you and Paul claimed right here that Harris accused Bruce Paley of plagiarism and you were, as I remember, quite "sneering and jeering" about it at the time.
The impression you gave, possibly unintentionally, was that Harris had publicly accused this Paley or had otherwise directly attacked his integrity.
Is this, in fact, true?
Can you quote where Harris goes on public record as accusing Paley of plagiarism?
The reason I ask is that as far as I understand it, Harris has never accused Paley of anything at all.
As I understand it - Paley was himself accusing a man called Paul Harrison of having stolen his ideas. Melvin's part in this (as far as I know) was merely to write you a private letter in which he pointed out that both Harrison and Paley could have got their ideas from a novel that had been published some years before. He also commented that the novel was published in NYC and that Paley used to work as an importer of American books and comics.
This letter was never intended for publication and it contained no accusation that Paley had done anything at all.
You then used his unpublished private comments about the case as part of your justification for claiming him to be an unreliable researcher.
Is this not correct?
Given this, plus Feldman's false allegations, the statements from one of Feldman's advisors that Harris was "lacking integrity", and your current unfortunately personal entry about him in the A-Z isn't it maybe slightly understandable if Harris is slightly impetuous and tetchy when he posts here?
He's been treated badly, misrepresented and grievously insulted both personally and professionally. I can't help thinking that in his place I'd be thinking about getting myself a good lawyer.
Martin, I didn't want to introduce this topic, and left to myself I never would have mentioned any of these things, since I think the whole matter falls outside the scope of proper public discussion.
But since you raised the matter, and even posted up the disputed entry on Harris right here on the boards, I felt I had to say something to try and present a slightly more balanced picture of the rights and wrongs than tends to get put across here most of the time.
I shan't say any more about it unless you continue the conversation, as I think it's a distraction from the main issues.
with best wishes to you
Karoline |
Author: Scott Nelson
Saturday, 21 April 2001 - 07:41 pm | | | John, you're amazing. If you put as much intensity into JtR, you'd have solved the case by by now. |
Author: Karoline L
Saturday, 21 April 2001 - 10:43 pm | | Paul wrote to RJP:
"however all you list is the data on which a case against Mike can be and is based but examination of each piece of that data may make the collective whole look less supportive of the hypothesis based on it. In other words, all that you list does look highly suspicious and may indeed be leading you to the correct conclusion, but in some (maybe all) cases there are viable alternative explanations, as with the purchase of the red diary or Mike’s adoption of an alias, which may make them look less suspicious or not suspicious at all."
Paul, of course, anyone can take a circumstantial case like this one and 'discover' alternate explanation for each of the available facts.
MB confessed?
Well, he was probably lying.
MB bought an empty Victorian diary just before he first took the fake 'diary' to the Crew agency?
Well, maybe he just wanted to see what (another) old Victorian diary looked like.
MB had the text of the diary on his wp?
Well, maybe he copied it there as a study-aid.
MB lied to the police about having the text of the diary on his wp?
Well, maybe he was just confused. or maybe he didn't lie really. or maybe he lied for other reasons we don't know about yet.
No one has been able to discover anyone who owned the diary or saw the diary before 1992, or anyone who can be traced as a possible creator of the diary - excpet the Barretts and Kane?
Well, that doesn't mean that such people aren't out there. If MB was telling the truth about getting the diary from Devereux then maybe...
Devereaux's family say they never saw the diary or heard him talk about it?
Well, maybe they aren't telling the truth. or maybe he kept it quiet from them.
This is all couched in terms that seem reasonable. But are they really? How rational is this method of reasoning and where does it actually get us?
Suppose we have a murdered man lying on the floor with a knife beside him that clearly matches the fatal wound and which is identical to other knives that belong to his next-door neighbor. Suppose we have evidence that the neighbor was seen sharpening a knife very like this one just days before the crime was committed. Suppose also that the neighbor is later found trying to sell some items that were taken from the dead man's house, and that the dead man had recently received a threatening letter in a handwriting that closely resembled a friend of the neighbor's.
Taken separately, what do these facts tell us?
1.the knife matched exactly with the wound?
Well, okay but there is nothing to show that there aren't other knives that would also match just as well. No one saw the knife actually entering the man's body. So in fact we have no real proof the knife had anything to do with the murder at all. It could just be lying there by coincidence.
2.the knife is identical to others owned by the man's neighbor
Well, okay, but that doesn't prove the neighbor ever owned that knife. Maybe there was an unknown murderer who snuck in and just happened to be carrying a knife exactly like one of the neighbor's set.
Or maybe the neighbor lent the knife to the man who then killed himself with it .
3.The neighbor was seen sharpening a knife just like this just days before the murder was commited?
Well, okay - but how do we know he wasn't just doing this innocently? People often sharpen knives but not usually for the purpose of killing someone. - Maybe the neighbor was going to have a tough steak for dinner.
Until we've proved he wasn't we just can't go jumping to conclusions.
4.The neighbor was later found trying to sell some items taken from the murdered man's house?
well, okay - but we can't use after the fact behaviour to deduce anything about guilt or innocence, so this is ruled inadmissible by the Omlor method.
And anyhow, the neighbor could just have dropped round, found the guy was murdered, and just grabbed the chance to steal a few valuables before running off home in a panic.
Each of these 'alternative' explanations makes a limited amount of sense. But what they completely ignore is the significance of cumulative evidence.
You don't find answers by looking for what separates one fact from another. You find answers by looking for what connects them. This is how all enquiries, scientific, historical, criminal, must proceed. This is the only way that comprehensive theories can ever be created
A wise investigating officer wouldn't look at our murder case quoted above, throw up his hands and cry "oh, there are just so many equally possible alternatives!". He would look at all the facts and recognise that while separately they might tell any one of a number of stories, together they seem to tell only one - and that story is that the neighbor is probably also the murderer.
Similarly in the case of the Barretts. There are (there always will be) numerous possible alternative explanations for each individual piece of data. But that isn't the point. The point is to look for what unites the data not what divides it. To look for the single simplest story it seems to be telling.
Currently, with all the data we presently possess, I suggest the simplest and best explanation that unites all the facts is this:
The diary was forged in about 1992 by MB with assistance from Kane and possibly Devereux, and with the full knowledge of AG. It was composed on MB's wp, and afterwards an authentic old diary was sought. The first one bought was too small and had '1891' unhelpfully printed on it. So a second, larger one was obtained, possibly at short and desperate notice.
Kane then wrote out the text into the 'diary' in one or two long sittings, using ink MB had purchased from an art shop in the town, and shortly afterwards, MB went to London to try and place the 'diary of Jack the Ripper', using a false name and a spurious story concocted to ensure that all possible blame might devolve upon a conveniently dead mate.
This is not proven, and it may eventually turn out to be wrong either partially or completely.
It is just a theory - but can anyone seriously deny that presently it offers the best, simplest and most rational explanation of all the known facts?
Can anyone provide another single theory that unites all the data in a way that is better or just as good?
is it really so desperately bigoted of me to suggest that while all investigation should of course remain ongoing that, pending further discoveries, this is both a very plausible and very probable explanation and one we should probably accept as our current working model?
And if it shoud turn out that no further datas is forthcoming, shouldn't this remain our best guess at the probable truth?
best wishes
Karoline |
Author: Martin Fido
Sunday, 22 April 2001 - 03:36 am | | Karoline,
As I said at the end of my last, I have no intention of carrying on the sort of long, barely polite debate that you seem to enjoy. I'm sorry, but I frankly couldn't care less what your opinion is of me or Melvin or our writing.
John,
Wow! 31 questions and supplementaries, by my rough count, to almost all of which my answer woud have to be 'I don't know'. And where I can give an answer it contributes to the darkness rather than the enlightenment, thus:
Has Mike told other lies for no apparent reason? - I'm not sure that reasons aren't often apparent for the lies Mike does tell. Though they vary from time to time. At one moment he may be trying to give himself importance; at another trying to injure Anne; at yet another trying to curry favour or get a bottle of whisky out of whoever is with him. At his wildest, it simply appears to be 'the drink speaking'.
Do Anne's changing set of narratives tell us anything at all about who wrote it? - No
Is there any genuine testimonial evidence linking this diary to anyone anywhere before 1992 - Only Anne's account of seeing it in a cupboard in her father's house and subsequently keeping it hidden from Mike and Caroline in hers, and her father's story that it came into his possession via 'Granny Formby'. Those who know Anne best think her testimony is genuine. Many people who hardly know her at all think it dubious. Probably most people's opinion of Billy's story depends on what they think of Anne.
Are Mike's and Anne's stories and behaviour reliable evidence at all? - Mike's, definitely not. Anne's - well, opinions vary as above.
Does science help link the book to any possible authors? - No
Does it narrow down the time of composition? - I don't think so
Does the rhetoric of the book link it to any specific time or place? - Not obviously, and you would seem to be as well qualified as those of us with literary and linguistic training who concluded that there were points where the language seemed later than 1890s. The general difficulty is that, assuming it to be a mid- to late twentieth century forgery, its efforts to imitate a 'Victorian' sound will match our general rhetorical expectations, and not stick out as an obviously dateable anachronistic impression of Victorianism.
Are there things in the book that might link it to the centennial - Not things IN the book, but the appearance of the book itself obviously provoked the suspicion that the centennial publicity inspired it. Of course, there is the variously interpretable knowledge of 'tin matchbox, empty' which came into the public domain as a result of one new book and one revised standard book which came out as warm-ups to the centennial.
Do we know (from handwriting, e.g.) that Mike and Anne couldn't have written it? - I don't know which, if any, document examiners have given opinions on this. Since document examination is more an art or a 'skill' than a science, the choice of practitioner is exceptionally important. Two whom I wouldn't trust at all were called in by Feldman. One whom I thought excellent was originally called in by Shirley, and two others whom I thought excellent were called in by the Sunday Times and Rendell respectively. I don't know whether any of them ever gave an opinion on the diary writing and the Barretts, and in any case, their relative merits as herein described are only my opinion (though I could give supporting reasons if it ever seemed necessary). But I don't remember ever having heard from any of the people who say 'it's not Anne's or Mike's handwriting', or point to Mike's evasion and inability to sit down and write a sample passage, that they in fact had a professional document examiner's opinion on the matter.
I think somebody remarked earlier that Scotland Yard, on the Sunday Times' complaint, took a look to see if anybody could be charged with fraud. They certainly looked hard at the Barretts and I don't believe they were convinced that they heard the truth from them. But they didn't attempt to bring any charges against them.
It seems that 22 unanswered and I suspect unanswerable questions rather firmly underpin your doubts about asserting anything positive in re the Barretts' culpability.
Martin |
Author: Karoline L
Sunday, 22 April 2001 - 05:09 am | | Well Martin,
it seems you are always ready to post critical opinions of other people the moment they conflct in any way with yourself. Now that Alegria snd I have dared to question the root of your clear antagonism towards Harris, we are dismissed as equally contemptible. You refuse to answer his questions. Now you also refuse to answer ours.
All Alegria and I have asked of you is that you substantiate some of the allegations towards Harris that you and Paul have felt very free to make here in the past.
This is a perfectly reasonable request, that was made with perfect politeness. Yet you respond with a contempt and hostility that is extraordinary.
May I say it is something ironic to be told I have an appetite for 'barely polite' discourse when the only impolite language used here has come from your very good self towards Alegria and myself.
You and Paul spent weeks on these boards telling each other and anyone else who cared to read just how despicable Harris was over his treatment of Paley. You pronounce indignantly that your A-Z entry about him is perfectly justifed. Yet you never in all of that time brought one shred of hard evidence to support the claims and allegations.
And now when we ask you to do so - you suddenly discover you don't want to talk about this any more.
It's a great shame to have to discuss such things in public - and if you and Paul had been prepared to keep your private opinions private it wouldn't be necessary. But both of you have felt it was appropriate to air your criticisms and allegations in public. It follows therefore that in all decency you must publicly substantiate those allegations or publicly withdraw them - crying 'foul' and running away is just not an honorable option I'm afraid.
Since you don't care for my opinion you won't mind me telling you that your behaviour makes it look to me and I suspect to others as if you probably have no evidence to back up your allegations. That you may have been accusing Harris of things he has not actually done, or at least exaggerating his behaviour in order to publicly damn him. It looks as if rather than openly admitting that you can't substantiate the allegation, you are using another unsubstantiated attack (this time on Alegria and myself as being not worth talking to) as an excuse to pull out of the debate.
I actually have very little appetite for 'barely polite' discussions Martin. But I have even less appetite for unfair dealing, and when it seems to me this is happening sometimes long and barely polite discourse is the only way of dealing with it.
Karoline |
Author: Peter R.A. Birchwood
Sunday, 22 April 2001 - 06:26 am | | Martin and Paul:
No innuendo has been meant, neither has Keith Skinner's integrity been questioned. I merely seek to examine without having the benefit of first-hand information, the words of AB according to how they are reported by her various contacts and friends. Where I reprint Keith Skinner's own words it is because he has made a pertinent point which is worth re-reading in the context of my own comments. As I have been accused of hypocrisy and I have effectively been called a liar which has caused me to quote from documents in my possession to deny these charges, I think that this is all that I can usefully say on this matter.
"Why can't Anne have disagreed with Mike doing
something, but nevertheless assisted him make the best job
of it when it was done"
Because the emphasis so much in the past has been on the violence with which AG fought to have the diary destroyed or to stop MB publishing it that it is almost inconceivable that she could simply have agreed to type the transcript in the manner so described.
" This isn't 'copious notes and diaries everything that
happened.' It is a very impressive collection of notes of
the content of conversations and phone calls."
I'm sure that someone will tell me at great length what the difference is; I myself think that it's the same thing.
I'd like to associate myself with RJ's post of Friday, April 20, 2001 - 01:12 pm. Too much of the story has come from conversations or interviews with AG, MB or Billy Graham and very little from documentation or critical investigative work. That which has (as per evidence concerning the bank accounts and financial details provided by Karoline and myself) have been critical of some elements of the received story as suggested by the persons mentioned in RJ's post. There have therefore been attempts to redefine that evidence. |
Author: Martin Fido
Sunday, 22 April 2001 - 07:22 am | | Sorry, Karoline, life is too short to read your long grizzling inability to carry out your promise not to continue the debate.
Peter - Apologies for having apparently misunderstood your meaning, and jumped in touchily when I'm not familiar with the whole debate.
I can't offer anything helpful about the early conduct or likely conduct of the Barretts in all this, but I do wonder why so many people who were equally unfamiliar with them in 1992 feel that their a priori convictions about the forging of the diary necessarily overrule the observations of Paul Begg, Keith Skinner, Shirley Harrison (and, though not here to contribute, Martin Howells) who really did see a lot of them. (I admit I would understand questioning Feldy's interpretation of what he saw and was told). For example, I'd forgotten that Caroline, aet 14 or so, volunteered in casual conversation with Paul and Martin that she'd seen her father open the parcel with the diary and wonder what it was. Now I have to trust Paul's observation and conclude that this was a spontaneous and very telling piece of evidence in Mike's favour against all my own historical instincts, which had led me to misremember it as something her parents encouraged as Caroline's testimony. Of course I admit the POSSIBILITY that the child had been coached by her parents and was sufficiently bright to spot her opportunity to drop in the false claim and a sufficiently clever liar to completely deceive Paul and Martin. But at this point PROBABILITY starts swinging against me, much as I always incline to note the probability of some Barrettian involvement in the original production of the diary.
I'm sure everyone agrees that it would be nice if there were more documentary evidence. Without accusing you again of any innuendo, it is worth making clear that pretty strenuous attempts were made to see whether anything like sales receipts for Diamine ink and the like could be found. But once Anne's basic 'confession' was presented as the provenance of the diary, its very nature precluded any real possibility of finding documentary proof of anything. I confess to having lost interest and stopped attending as massive efforts were made to trace documentation of Granny Formby's residences and their possible neighbourhood with Alice Yapp's or that of whatever the man with an initial beginning with O was called; and the construction and reconstruction history of some building where Anne worked whose site had once had some connection with Maybrick, and all the rest of it. Karoline and her point of view aren't the only things I stop attending to if it seems to me that I'm being asked to pay attention to long-running and boring barking up wrong trees!
With all good wishes,
Martin |
Author: Peter R.A. Birchwood
Sunday, 22 April 2001 - 07:25 am | | Paul:
"Not so long ago it was being flatly argued that Mike and
Anne wrote the ‘diary’ themselves for financial gain. Keith
pointed out that the diarist’s handwriting did not look like
either Mike’s or Anne’s. This point was no properly
addressed and an argument ensued. Almost a year later the
people who did not address that question now acknowledge
that the handwriting doesn’t look like Mike or Anne’s and
they’ve grasped Gerrard Kane, a name pushed forward a long
while ago by Melvin Harris"
Now I don't want to interfere in your masterly reconstruction of events but at that time in the dim past I said in perfect truth that I could not see a similarity between the diary and the handwriting of AG and MB but that I was not a forensic document examiner. This provoked the usual howls of derision from you and your friends. As I have clearly said recently, I have just obtained copies of Gerard Kane's handwriting. In common with others I had previously believed that the small sample we then had was insufficient to say that Kane could have written the diary. Having now seen more examples I say now that his handwriting is very like the diarists and it is now my opinion that he COULD have written the diary. Although Paul, it is possible that your own opinions do not change over the years, if I receive more evidence that tends to overturn a previously-held idea, then I will change my opinion. |
Author: Martin Fido
Sunday, 22 April 2001 - 07:35 am | | Peter
- Well done in tracing a piece of Mr Kane's writing.
Does my memory deceive me, or do I recollect that Melvin actually dropped his suspicions of Kane at one point, and that Mr Kane threatened legal proceedings against anyone who accused him of writing the diary at another?
And have I heard that he has since died?
The document examiner I respect hugely is Sue Iremonger, and I can forward to you her address in case you are interested in a professional opinion on the handwritings and don't have your own preferred expert. I may add that she impressed a senior Scotland Yard Serious Crimes Unit detective who had firmly declared his complete mistrust of all document examiners before meeting her and seeing her work, and that she has a track record for giving answers that her clients don't want if that's what her findings show.
With all good wishes,
Martin |
Author: Paul Begg
Sunday, 22 April 2001 - 08:09 am | | Hi Alegria
The A to Z entry concerning Melvin Harris was debated almost endlessly with his in 1996, our reasons for it were presented at his request to two arbitors of his choosing, between them they agreed that our reasons were fair but thought the strictures too hard, a judgement with which we agreed and sought a mutually satisfactory rewording which is now unnecesarry because we have elected to drop the reference from future editions of the book. As far as I am concerned the matter is closed, finished, done, dusted, and mouldered away to nothingness, and I certainly have no intention whatsoever of debating it on these singularly inappropriate Boards where there is every chance that my words will be misinterpreted and misrepresented. But I will attempt to address one point you make.
Your judgements on Melvin Harris stand out in stark contrast and are on Melvin Harris himself and not his work.
As Martin said, ‘It would be deeply unfair to issue a general warning against any of Melvin's books…’ We attempted instead to indicate where in his work we believed a general warning was required, namely that Melvin is inclined to postulate incorrectly the motives of others and to make unjustifiable assertions when he perceives chicanery. In other words, it is advisable to confirm statements coming from Melvin Harris when (a) he is saying what he thinks someone else thought and when (b) he he thinks someone may be less than honest. It was therefore difficult to indicate that care should be taken before accepting what Melvin thinks without it being a comment on Melvin himself. The entry might have been better phrased, as we have acknowledged years ago, but it was not, I think, questioning Melvin Harris’s ‘personal integrity’, only an ocassional inclination to see mendacity where none exists. And if you want an easy-to-see example of the sort of thing we had in mind then, as Martin pointed out, a recent one is Melvin stating or allowing it to be inferred that McCormick penned “Eight Little Whores”, doing absolutely nothing to correct that misapprehension and in fact causing a bitter debate on these Boards when his accusation was questioned on the basis of McCormick’s own written denials. But it eventually emerged, after I had to personally endure a lot of rudeness and insult, that McCormick did not pen the words and that even the attributation of them to Ian Fleming is in question.
If you think it is unfair to single Melvin out for this sort of comment then I would ask that your bear in mind that Melvin is a professional debunker. Whilst the rest of us clear away the dead wood so that we can better see the living trees of fact, Melvin collects the dead wood and parades it for all to see – as he does in The Bloody Truth. There is nothing wrong with this. Indeed, it serves a valuable purpose. But exposing the frauds, fabrications, lies and mistakes of other people means that he is exposing those people as fraudsters, fabricators, liars and mistaken. This, you will understand, is very serious, reputation damaging stuff. Let me emphasise this – Melvin Harris exposes people as fraudsters, fabricators, liars and mistaken. Now, I don’t imagine that anyone here would disagree that if you are in the business of exposing people as liars and fabricators that you also have the very great moral responsibility to be scrupulously fair – and let me repeat that, scrupulously fair - when discussing the work of others. Anyone who is in the business of exposing people as liars and fabricators and who is not scrupulously fair, no matter what real or imagined provocation he thinks exists to justify it, can and should be criticised. It’s the same as being a bent cop.
And Melvin Harris exposes people as liars and fabricators from a moral highground as \i[the} debunker extraordinary, for he is: ‘arguably today’s top investigator and debunker of myth’, ‘unrivalled today at detecting contradictory theories and misleading ‘evidence’, and ‘highly regarded as a supersleuth’. He is also ‘hard hitting and remorseless in his exposure of fakes’ and ‘Melvin Harris at the last demolished trenchantly and scathingly the elaborate conspiracy…’ etc. (I add emphasis here to show that even the dust jackets of Melvin’s own books state that Melvin can be scathing and without remorse when he exposes fabrications and lies – which is, of course, fair enough, if they are lies and fabrications. Being scathing and remorseless when it comes to people who simply got it wrong or who he thinks got it wrong is a different ball game.
You see, Melvin is a writer with a reputation for authority and he exercises and wields it, leaving his readers in no doubt that his is the voice of accuracy and to be believed. For example: ‘From my standpoint, the only way to judge these rival theories is to apply to them the same standards that I apply to my own work. Having done that, I find faulty and incomplete research in both cases. Add to that wayward reasoning, and we have good grounds for suspecting that the conclusions will be addled. And so they are.’
Here is Melvin lauding his own abilities whilst deploring the ability of others. I also wonder why he thought it was necessary to do this. Indeed, I wonder why he thought it was necessary make such personal observations about the ability of the other theorists at all. It strikes me as gratuitous and unnecessary personal comment of the sort that a professional debunker who exposes people as liars and fabricators and he has a moral responsibility to be scrupulously fair should avoid. Why didn't he simply say where the theory was factually incorrect and leave it at that?
'I have pointed out that In The Bloody Truth I demonstrate how and why these papers are sheer fiction. Yet (names of authors), even though they suspect as much, drop their standards when they find a Dutton passage that helps their case.”
Now, how do you interpret those words? I’ll tell you how I interpret them. I interpret them as saying that two authors suspected that the material they were using was bogus but nevertheless used it because it helped support their case. I don’t know how else I am supposed to interpret those words.
But if one turns to those authors’ you will see them acknowledge in some detail why the source is unreliable and explain why they believed the material they wanted to use was reliable. The authors’ did not drop their standards at all. If the authors’ got something wrong, they got it wrong, but to state that they stooped to using bogus material is, I’m sure you’ll agree, far from scrupulously fair. Furthermore I would suggest that anyone reading the criticism would come away from it with a seriously jaundiced opinion of the work and standards of the two authors in question.
As you will no doubt have guessed, the writer was Melvin Harris (The Ripper File pages 147 and page 150 respectively). The authors criticised for faulty and incomplete research, wayward reasoning and addled conclusions were Keith Skinner, Martin Howells and Martin Fido, and authors who are supposed to have dropped their standards were Martin Howells and Keith Skinner. And in case anyone feels that Melvin Harris’s criticism of my friends and colleagues was the reason for the entry in the A to Z, I can assure them with my hand firmly on heart that it was not. Furthermore, Melvin’s criticism was published in 1989 and the revised edition of the A to Z containing the criticism of Melvin appeared in 1996. We did not criticise Melvin in the 1994 revision, as no doubt we would have done if it had been the cause. I cite these examples simply to demonstrate two instances where Melvin was guilty of what we complained about and why we complained. If anyone reviewing Melvin's posts thinks that he has been scrupulously fair, then they are entitled to their point of view. It isn't an opinion I share. But I will say that the entry was not intended to be a slur on Melvin's integrity, which has never been in question. Now, since this is supposed to be a discussion about the 'diary' not Melvin Harris, perhaps we could return to that subject.
Cheers - and sorry to have missed you at the Smoke and Stagger; I gather you now appreciate why it is so called!
Paul |
Author: Alegria
Sunday, 22 April 2001 - 08:10 am | | If anyone has the early copies of Ripperana still in their possession, and they would be willing to photocopy and send them, I am willing to pay for time and shipping.
Thanks,
Ally |
Author: Paul Begg
Sunday, 22 April 2001 - 08:31 am | | Peter
If someone advances a theory that contains a huge potential flaw then I reasonably expect that person to acknowledge the flaw and address it. You were advancing a theory that Mike and Anne penned the ‘diary’ themselves and you were asked to acknowledge and address the huge potential flaw that the diarist’s handwriting looked like neither Mike’s nor Anne’s. You neither acknowledged it nor addressed it. You instead swept it aside by claiming that you couldn’t comment because you were not a forensic document examiner. Well, I’m not a forensic document examiner either, but I would nevertheless have been able to acknowledge that Anne and Mike’s handwriting didn’t look like the diarist’s and that if it was confirmed by a reliable forensic document examiner that it wasn’t theirs then I’d have to bin the theory. Now, it seems, you have obtained more samples of Gerrard Kane’s handwriting and feel more inclined to venture that he could have written the ‘diary’. Implicit in this ‘could have written’ seems to be an admission that Mike and Anne did not write the ‘diary’. Does this mean that you have suddenly acquired the skills of a forensic document examiner? Or does it mean that you are using the same abilities you could have used over a year ago to venture an opinion about whether the diarist’s handwriting matched Mike’s and Anne’s?
And my opinion most certainly do change and adapt to changing and adapting material, which is why I roundly applaud that yours have changed to accommodate new information. What I regret and the point I was making to RJP is that it has taken so much time and aggravation to acknowledge what some people had acknowledged so many years ago. |
Author: Alegria
Sunday, 22 April 2001 - 08:41 am | | Paul,
Our posts crossed, I am going to refrain from answering until I have more facts at my disposal. The problem here is everyone involved is INVOLVED and it is hard to get an unbiased view from anyone. And yes the Smoke and Stagger IS so unfortunately accurate. :-)
Martin,
I have said it before on the boards and I want to repeat it now. If a person is not willing to debate or discuss a topic, they shouldn't raise it. You have reasons for avoiding answering any questions regarding Melvin Harris. You won't answer him because you don't know who posts for him, you won't answer me because I am a shrewish harpy. Fine. However, if you are not going to answer questions that defend Melvin, you shouldn't be posting statements that require a defense. |
Author: Paul Begg
Sunday, 22 April 2001 - 08:55 am | | Karoline
You ask how rational a line of reasoning may be. Well, it appears to me that the Karoline Leach mode of reasoning is to grab the first and most obvious interpretation of a piece of data, then dismiss all other interpretations of that data as improbable and maintain that her interpretation should be accepted as the most probable truth until other data comes along. And no matter how strenuously anyone argues that the alternative interpretations have already come along and are not improbable, to staunchly maintain that they are improbable, when necessary draw Elvis is alive and well in Bhutan-like comparisons, and blithely carry on with the original argument. Thus doth the wheel turn inexorably to nowhere.
All I am saying is that each piece of evidence should be carefully examined and probable alternative interpretations be explored. Is this a sensible approach? Well, yes, I think it is. And as an example I point out that ages and ages ago Keith Skinner pointed out that the diarist’s handwriting did not look like Mike’s or Anne’s and that if it wasn’t theirs then somebody else must have written the ‘diary’. Ages and ages later you seem to acknowledge that the point had some validity. Nothing has changed, no new information has emerged (except a bit more of Gerrard Kane's handwriting, which has no bearing on whether the diarist's handwriting looks like Mike's or Anne's), and all I can say is what a pity it is that this was not acknowledged in the first place and the implications examined, especially if Mr Kane is now dead and beyond questioning. So, sorry, Karoline, but I really can’t go round and round in circles trying to make it clear that your interpretation is not more valid than mine, only to have you fire back at me that it is, apparently based on no evidence stronger than your personal belief that it is, especially when John Omlor seems to me to have argued well and sensibly where the fallacy in your reasoning lies and to which you have not, I think, made any reply. |
Author: Martin Fido
Sunday, 22 April 2001 - 09:05 am | | Alegria,
I have never declined to answer you, and certainly don't think you are a shrewish harpy. I decline to get into a lengthy debate with endless points to be answered on the topic of Melvin Harris. You posted a short message, and I returned a short answer. Karoline sent in two long point-enumerating drones of the type I had explicitly said I did not intend to answer, and I did not answer them.
My original introduction of Melvin in this thread was simply to explain to Mr Palmer why it was that he apparently came to the boards, found Melvin saying a number of things that seemed to be true, and yet getting a lot of people jumping all over him. Paul's splendid and patient account above should make it quite clear that, as I originally said to Mr Palmer, Melvin's work is full of such a lot of unjustified and unjustifiable put-downs of other people that it is often difficult to concentrate on responding to his serious points. As Paul again, rightly, noted, it took him for ever and he had to endure a lot of abuse to establish the truth about Eight Little Whores. I simply don't have his patience.
All the best,
Martin |
Author: Karoline L
Sunday, 22 April 2001 - 09:37 am | | Martin-
here is a short question of the type you do feel able to answer:
can you show me where, when and how Harris accused Paley of plagiarism as you claim?
If you wish to answer that then do, if you don't then don't - but spare me any more of the routine personal attacks you and Paul both seem to consider a substitute for rational argument.
I'm not going to respond in kind and tell either of you what I think of your manners, your methodologies and your apparent sense of professionalism.
That would be rude and I prefer not to be so if I can help it.
with sincere good wishes from a "grizzling droning bore" (this, Martin, being presumably an example of the kind of "sneering jeering" epithets you never use)
Karoline |
Author: Karoline L
Sunday, 22 April 2001 - 10:08 am | | Paul,
I think Peter has made it pretty clear where the current investigation is placed.
As he says, the diary handwriting does not resemble AG's or MB's. Last year it was considered possible that one of them may have altered their handwriting - and this was why it was being advocated that a professional document examiner should be consulted.
And this was why Peter answered your questions by saying he couldn't comment finally until such a document examiner had seen the writing.
Since that time, a larger example of Kane's writing as well as various additional data has come to light. And this has changed things considerably. I can't comment on that data at this stage since it isn't in the public forum - but the consensus seems to be that it now looks very possible that Kane could have written the 'diary'.
Kane of course can be tied in with the Barretts through his friendship with Devereux that went back to at least 1979.
Therefore it becomes a good possibility that Kane wrote the diary and was therefore involved with MB, AG and possibly others in the creation of this document.
There is as yet no proof, of course, but there is a powerful circumstantial case. It represents probably the best theory that can currently be made out of the accumulated data.
Let me assure you again that neither I nor anyone else is advocating that we forget about other possibilities .As I keep saying (and you appear to keep not reading), of course all options must remain open, and investigations must proceed with a completely open mind.
However, it is also true that in the opinion of many here the current state of the data does imply a considerable probability that the diary was created within the confines of the Barrett menage, possibly written by Kane. I In fact I am not aware of any of the current evidence that is not consistent with this view.
Can anyone think of another single unified interpretation that fits the data as well or better?
best wishes
Karoline |
Author: Martin Fido
Sunday, 22 April 2001 - 11:03 am | | Dear Karoline,
This was fairly thoroughly explored some time back on the boards. To the best of my recollection, the first approach was made to me by telephone. The invitation to charge Bruce with plagiarism in the next edition of A-Z ws unmistakeable. There was no implicit suggestion whatever that I should approach Bruce to find out whether the charge was true. This was something tnat Melvin could have done through Bruce's publishers in any case, before putting the story to anyone else. (Melvin will no doubt remember that when I was told an extremely discreditable story about him, I immediately approached him about it by telephone, and have never since published it).
I think Paul and Keith may have the slightly different recollection that there was an initial written information from Melvin. All three of us would agree, however, that there was no possibility of mistaking the expectation that it would give Melvin the greatest satisfaction if we published something damaging to Bruce. I recollect no comparison with Paul Harrison, whose details show that he was in any case dealing with a different Joe Barnett; pretty certainly the wrong one, as, again, we all knew.
With all good wishes,
Martin F |
Author: John Omlor
Sunday, 22 April 2001 - 12:21 pm | | Hello everyone,
I would like to try and write about one or two very small and simple things this morning, in the hope that they might clearly illustrate my concerns about some of the work being done here and the manner in which it is being presented.
I find, for instance, another list from Karoline here on the boards this morning, and I would like to address, by way of illustration, one or two items on the list and specifically the way in which she has chosen to compose these items. I am afraid that her presentation might be at best simply incomplete and at worst unfair and misleading and I do not think that leaving such characterizations stand would serve the best interests of any investigation. Remember: I am not calling attention to these lines because I think the Barrett's are innocent. I really do not know either way. But I do think our readings should be careful, and I do not think these lines indicate the sort of care and patience necessary for analysis.
In beginning her list, Karoline writes to Paul:
"Paul, of course, anyone can take a circumstantial case like this one and 'discover' alternate explanation for each of the available facts."
And so, I think we are to suppose that what follows will be the "alternate explanations" that have been offered "for each of the available facts." But are they? Do they even approach the beginning of a presentation of these "alternate explanations?" If not, and if they are noticeably incomplete or simply caricatures of those explanations, then I think serious questions concerning the fairness and reliability and completeness of Karoline's discussion here begin to arise.
I would like to examine just a few of these "available facts" and the way Karoline presents the "alternate explanations."
These are Karoline's constructions:
"MB confessed?
Well, he was probably lying."
Stop. Now this is what concerns me. And I am afraid this is a particularly egregious example. To the "available fact" that Mike Barrett has repeatedly attempted to confess, people on these boards have offered a number of responses, including, yes, reservations about the validity of these confessions and concerns that he may be lying, but also hard evidence and close detailed reading that seem to substantially support the view that Mike, in his confession proves to be unable to describe how exactly he forged this document, and when he does offer specific information and it is checked out with the relevant merchants and parties the information turns out to be false or at least to be rife with conflict. There is hard testimonial and documentary evidence of this. It has been recorded and disseminated. The reason Mike is unable to produce a full confession that explains just how he did what he says he did remains open for interpretation, of course; but it is clear that his confessions are contradictory and partial and conflict with available evidence from much more independent sources, including the merchants in question. Consequently, Mike's "confessions" have become suspect.
We already know all of this. Now here is my point. By reducing all of these concerns, in her own composition, down to a simple and apparently too easy and convenient response, "Well, he was probably lying" is to oversimplify the issue, to offer a noticeably incomplete representation of the actual response and to even, perhaps, mislead readers by unfairly presenting the "alternate explanations" in a barely recognizable and fragmentary and incomplete manner. This speaks directly either to the question of Karoline's thoroughness and responsibility in her presentation of the issues here or it speaks to a deliberate desire for hastily rushing towards a solution, a desire that I find troublesome to say the least. In either case, I do not think that reducing the problems surrounding Mike's confessions and their relationship to known facts and hard testimonial and physical evidence to the phrase "Well, he was probably lying." does any sort of justice at all to the issues at stake or to the seriousness and complexity of these questions. I would certainly never want to use such a callous and flippant reading (of what exist elsewhere as a set of careful interpretations and responses) as anything like evidence or support for any conclusions whatsoever and hope that she wouldn't either.
There are, I'm afraid several other items in this list wherein the "alternate explanations" are either severely mischaracterized or dramatically cut short and thereby rendered incomplete and in some cases almost unrecognizable. This is not, I think, the way a reasoned or rational discussion should proceed. And Karoline herself has been repeatedly calling for reason and rational thinking.
Let us look at just one or two others, so as not to try the reader's patience (now there's a desire on my part on which I have obviously long since given up  ).
Karoline lists:
"MB bought an empty Victorian diary just before he first took the fake 'diary' to the Crew agency?
Well, maybe he just wanted to see what (another) old Victorian diary looked like."
Again, by beginning these single line responses with the casual "Well, maybe..." the "alternate" possibilities are quickly made to appear not nearly as well thought out or likely as the original statements and consequently seem easy to dismiss. But, in fact, there is no argument actually taking place here. Merely a dramatic reconstruction and reduction of complex possible narratives to casual replies. This is unfair, I think. In fact, there is a possible scenario, suggesting that Mike Barrett, upon receiving this book and being curious about it, began researching everything he could about the book and, not being a skilled researcher, or even a very logical or responsible one, may indeed have tried to get hold of a proper Victorian diary to compare to the one in his hands. My suggestion here is not that this scenario is accurate but that it, exactly like Karoline's -- which suggests that Mike bothered to completely compose this diary then realized he didn't have a book in which to copy it, just went out and tried to buy one publicly, leaving the inevitable paper trail behind him, even knowing that he was about to use the book whose purchase could be easily traced to his own family, to create this forgery and to take it to an agent and to foist it on the public -- remains a possible and even similarly likely interpretation. In Karoline's scenario, Mike just went out and publicly purchased the very book, complete with traceable payment and receipt, with which he was going to commit a felony. My suggestion here is not that this is an inaccurate scenario. My, I think completely reasonable, suggestion is that either one of these two interpreted scenarios still seems utterly possible and each about as likely as the other actually, and, in any case, Karoline's too quick reduction of the "alternate" possible scenario to an incomplete and misleading single line is both hasty and careless and does not respect the details of the discussion.
[An aside: It also seems at least possible that her attachment of the word "alternate" to the explanations with which she does not agree is now becoming a simple, quick and effective way to render one set of explanations (hers) the "obvious" ones and another set of explanations (Paul's, in this case) the "other" ones. This is a rhetorical maneuver that has long served the cause of sophism, but that is invalid unless one set of scenarios is clearly and completely demonstrated to be more obvious than the others. I am not convinced that is yet the case here.]
Karoline's list, continues, of course, and I would like to demonstrate my concerns about the fairness of her presentation with a look at one more item on it:
"MB had the text of the diary on his wp?
Well, maybe he copied it there as a study-aid."
Here it is again. First, it now seems apparent that the text of the diary was actually on a disk, not "on" the word processor. This difference is important because although we know what happened to the word processor (which was apparently blank), we have no idea exactly what happened to the disk. Either Mike, as he suggests in one of his confessions, sent it to a family member to be destroyed (making the word processor itself irrelevant, I suppose) or he hung on to it (suggesting that he did not feel it would be incriminating, and that perhaps he or Anne did in fact transcribe it only after receiving the diary) and it was used to produce copies of the transcript for various experts -- not at all simply "as a study aid." In either case, there is a considerable lack of information about this issue and a number of scenarios seem to remain equally probable concerning the use or the fate of the disk. However, none of this shows up in Karoline's "Well, maybe he copied it there as a study aid.." which remains a harshly unfair and noticeably partial and incomplete reproduction of any "alternate explanation."
I think the not so hidden rhetorical assumptions and desires of Karoline's newest list of "facts" and "alternate explanations" is beginning to become more and more apparent.
Someone recently asked me why I seem to respond more critically to some people's writing than to others. Well, this too convenient and carelessly constructed list of question and answers, that would apparently seek to dismiss serious reading and serious and detailed possible scenarios that have been carefully discussed, all in the name of scoring rhetorical points and without a single citation to clarify any of the so-called "alternate explanations," is a demonstration of one reason I respond so critically to certain posts. It has nothing at all to do with who wrote them or even with whether they are arguing for or against complicity. It has only to do with what seems to me dangerously unfair rhetorical strategies and either conveniently quick or simply careless reading.
I could continue this reading of Karoline's list and offer detailed responses that would seek to more accurately present the various "alternate explanations" I have seen discussed here by many people, but I think the point should by now be clear even to those who would support Karoline's conclusions concerning complicity. This is not the way these conclusions should be arrived at, if only in the interest of full disclosure and of justice.
One final thought, on an unrelated matter, but one which also now has me concerned. At the end of her list, Karoline offers this "fact."
"Devereaux's family say they never saw the diary or heard him talk about it?
Well, maybe they aren't telling the truth. or maybe he kept it quiet from them. "
But only about half a dozen posts later Karoline wishes to re-establish the link between Devereaux and the diary, claiming:
"Kane of course can be tied in with the Barretts through his friendship with Devereux that went back to at least 1979.
Therefore it becomes a good possibility that Kane wrote the diary and was therefore involved with MB, AG and possibly others in the creation of this document."
Now unless Karoline is claiming that Devereux knew nothing about the diary but knew Kane and somehow introduced him to the Barretts and then his friends all composed the forgery without him ever knowing about it, her earlier mentioning of the "fact" that
"Devereaux's family say they never saw the diary or heard him talk about it?"
does not seem to fit in with her more recent suggestion that it was Kane who wrote the diary and it was Devereaux who provided the link to the Barretts. In fact, it now appears, after all of this, that Karoline herself, faced with the denials from Tony's family but still needing Tony as the Barrett's link to Kane, might now be forced to respond using the very line she earlier cited dismissively as an "alternate" explanation! "Well, maybe they aren't telling the truth. Or maybe he kept it quiet from them."
Suddenly, this explanation does not seem so "alternate" at all if we want Tony to be complicit and to have served as a link between the Barrett's and Kane. Unless, of course he had no clue what his frends were doing -- this would be, I suppose, an "alternate" "alternate" explanation?
Which is it? Which one is the "fact?" Tony knew about the diary and passed it from Kane to Mike because he was in on it with Kane and the Barrett's, or Tony did not know about the diary and did not pass it to Mike since his "family say they never saw the diary or heard him talk about it?" Karoline seems to be offering both conflicting interpretations of these "facts" at the same time. Or is she suggesting that Tony was the link of association but knew nothing about the diary? See, that's the thing about "facts." Sometimes they are not "facts" at all. That Tony's family "say they never saw the diary or heard him talk about it" might be a fact. But that therefore Tony could not have passed it to Mike (which is Karoline's first implication -- that the "alternate" scenario that says Mike got it without knowing it was a forgery from Tony must be less likely than that Mike composed it himself) is not a "fact" at all but an interpretation. So is almost everything Karoline has offered as evidence of complicity, of course, but this interpretation seems particularly confused since she seems to be claiming both that there is no evidence that Tony ever knew about any diary and that there is evidence that Tony was the link between the penman of the diary and the Barretts. Are we to suppose he was the associative link but he remained unaware of the diary throughout the entire research, composition, and creation process as undertaken by two of his friends who knew each other only through him? Is this the "simple" scenario we are now being asked to prefer over all the others? Or is Karoline now being forced to agree with what she once dismissed as an "alternate explanation": that members of Tony's family "aren't telling the truth. Or maybe he kept it quiet from them." Sometimes these "alternate explanations" can come in handy later, I suppose.
In any case, I am certainly not prepared to say which of all of these scenarios concerning Devereaux's role is even close to being simpler than the others, several of which I have seen more carefully advanced here; and I am certainly not willing to believe that Karoline, in either of these two posts, demonstrates that any questions have been actually answered with any detail, care, or any physical or material or testimonial evidence of any kind yet, or that her own methodologies and her own readings have been particularly careful, detailed, thorough, or fair.
At least that's how I read these posts this morning. I apologize again for moving too slowly and for holding back our progress towards a solution. I would like our history, when we write it here, to be thorough, well-reasoned, and carefully supported with real evidence and ultimately to be as complete as possible.
Thanks for reading,
--John |
Author: Alegria
Sunday, 22 April 2001 - 02:08 pm | | Repost, minus the date which I had incorrect.
Regarding the Paley incident. I was sent a letter from Mel Harris that is addressed to Martin Fido. This is the passage on Paley (I had to retype this from a fax so any omitted words, punctuation mistakes or typos are mine) :
"As it is you now have the full story regarding the incredible coincidence involving Andrews and Paley which would not have emerged without my letter. As for conscious plagiarism, I have always made allowances for the possibility of cryptomnesia, indeed I have written and lectured on the importance of that phenomena."
Allow me to save you the necessity of scurrying for your dictionaries (as I had to do ), Cryptomnesia is exactly what it sounds like. Basically you read something, it percolates in your subconscious without you being aware of it and it comes out a while later as something you consider an original thought. Classic examples of this can be found in some of Berke Breathed's Bloom County cartoons that have STRONG echoes of old Doonsbury cartoons.
Anyway back to Mel: This does not sound like a strong hint to charge Bruce with plagiarism to me. Were their other times and other letters where he reversed himself?
|
Author: John Omlor
Sunday, 22 April 2001 - 04:17 pm | | Karoline,
You ask above:
"Can anyone think of another single unified interpretation that fits the data as well or better?"
Putting aside for a moment the ways in which I think your own reading is neither unified nor a particularly thorough and convincing fit with the extremely limited data we actually have (please scroll up two posts to find these concerns advanced within what I hope is a patient, careful, and detailed reading of your recent "list" of "alternate explanations" and its unfair and grossly incomplete characterizations of other's positions and advanced scenarios) -- I do think someone has now perhaps offered at least the beginnings of another "interpretation" that at least seems to fit the data just as well.
It can be found now on the College Diary board -- and the beginning of a critique of this newly developed "interpretation" of these events can be found, in fact, in the very same post. Anyone interested is invited to have a quick look there for still one more possible scenario.
Thanks for the question,
--John |
Author: Karoline L
Sunday, 22 April 2001 - 04:38 pm | | John,
thank you for another very long contribution from you. I am most deeply impressed by the depth and quantity of your scholasticism, whch is a tribute to the best traditions of modern academia. In homage to this and to your good self I would ask you to consider an alternative way of handling data rather than the deteterminedly deconstructionist or post-Kantian paradigm I see you favour.
There is a structure and indeed a reading of most discourse, diatribes and even menus that can and indeed even might be seen both determinedly and otherwise to imply strictures upon a non-determinist view point requiring careful definition if sophism,and danger are to be avoided.
Most great positors and semiological giants (as it were) have tended to use language or linguistic construction as a means of clarification, even edification. The genius, as it were is in the perception of the link that binds the chain and not in the simple but simplistic neo-acculturated differences which might be seen to impose an artifice of chaos on a primordial simplicity.
While it might be a circumlocutory achievement to establish a paradigmal interface wherein the monochromatic spectrum might be perceived in inverse relationship to its very self, and while it might be veridically possible to perform a meretricious and seemingly worthwhile discourse that will dazzle or avalanche its readers into a state of awe, it does not of a necessity comply that this discourse, even utilising the most resonant popular scholastic terminologies will in and of itself, semiologically or in direct antipathy to this plenitude be in fact of any long term intellectual value even within the limited and possibly intestinal confines of a post-structuralist endeavour.
Do you see where I am coming from?
best wishes
Karoline |
Author: Martin Fido
Sunday, 22 April 2001 - 04:44 pm | | Hi Alegria,
I guess the post you have withdrawn is the one which quoted a letter of Melvin's and asked me whether it didn't somehow contradict the suggestion that he was trying to do the dirty on Bruce Paley? (At least, something to that effect including the word 'cryptamnesia' or something turned up in my mailbox).
For the benefit of anyone who saw it and wonders if there is any reply, I should have to say that internal evidence alone must show you that is a letter responding to our information that Bruce had written evidence that he devised his theory well before the appearance of the novel he was accused of plagiarising, and not a letter offering any information for us to follow up.
The real question I'd have to throw back to you is this. When I was given highly discreditable information about Melvin, would you have thought it proper of me to pass it on to anyone else at all before getting Melvin's personal comment on it? Would you not have thought it deeply disreputable to have passed it on to another person with the suggestion that they might like to publish it in a forthcoming work? Because that is what Melvin did with the information he received about Bruce. The fact that it was apparently being gossipped about at Cammy Woolf's doesn't change the fact that his use of this idle speculation was to forward it to people who might publish it, and he made no attempt that I am aware of to ask Bruce whether there was any truth in it. I think Melvin would be justifiably outraged, even at this stage, if I were to say here, 'You know, I was once told that Melvin admitted to X, Y and Z, and his explanation was alpha, beta and gamma'. If you hear something to another writer's discredit, the proper thing to do is to notify that writer, and if he offers an explanation, accept it and suppress the story.
But maybe I'm just hopelessly old-fashioned.
All the best,
Martin |
Author: Alegria
Sunday, 22 April 2001 - 04:52 pm | | Yes that is the post that I have withdrawn and yes I will repost it when I have cleared up something that I may have goofed on.
That letter did contain a statement to the effect he had never published in print anything against Paley, he had sent you the relative information for your consideration as an editor and as he was under the impression that Paley was a friend of yours he figured you would ask him for his side before you published it. |
Author: Martin Fido
Sunday, 22 April 2001 - 05:03 pm | | Cor!
I haven't seen such an unhappy attempt to impress with inadequately comprehended verbiage since Ronnie Kray's carefully memorized response to being charged (quite rightly) with murder, "I presume that your presumptions are precisely incorrect and that your sarcastic insinuations are too obnoxious to be appreciated."
Not to worry, John. Many of us are competent to use 'scholasticism' or 'sophism' correctly, and we didn't find your careful argument in any way long-winded or pretentious.
All the best,
Martin |
Author: Martin Fido
Sunday, 22 April 2001 - 05:09 pm | | Hi Alegria,
I have no recollection of its ever being suggested that Melvin had published his accusations in print, but I suppose it's possible that we asked him whether he had done so, as that would have made it positively necessary for us to clear Bruce in the upcoming edition. It is interesting that you have been given access to this letter, and not to one offering us the original information, wherein you might have expected to find the suggestion that we approach Paley, don't you think?
And do you think I would have been justified in similarly releasing my information discreditable to Melvin to a third party, and leaving it to them to decide how best to confirm it and whether or not to print it?
All the best,
Martin |
Author: Martin Fido
Sunday, 22 April 2001 - 05:23 pm | | Hi again, Alegria, having just found your reprinted letter.
As I say, the letter you reproduce was emphatically not the initial approach advising us of something worth considering for publication. It is an obvious recovery from the whole idea having been blown out of the water.
I was amused to note that at that date 'Honest Mel' made some play with his letter as the reason the 'incredible coincidence' emerged, whereas back on the boards when this was discussed, he was happy to distance himself a little with the information that it was Cammy Woolf who gave him the tip-off.
All the best,
Martin |
Author: Alegria
Sunday, 22 April 2001 - 05:25 pm | | Hi Martin,
I am way ahead of you. I have asked for the original letter which was the one dated March 22. I am getting these things in batches and I have part but not all of that letter. I will post anything I find there. I am neither a supporter of Mel Harris nor you. I am trying to figure out where all of this started and I intend to be scrupulously fair to both sides. If you have the rest of the letter, please feel free to send it to me. As you know, Melvin does not have a computer and I am working through an intermediary which slows things down a lot. |
Author: Martin Fido
Sunday, 22 April 2001 - 05:39 pm | | Fair enough, Alegria. If I had the correspondence of that period I should certainly be quoting it by now!
Ultimately, I should also welcome an objective moral judgement on the propriety under any circumstances of releasing derogatory information to a third party, as Melvin did, or directly approaching the person indicted and thereafter keeping silent, as I did.
All the best,
Martin |
Author: Alegria
Sunday, 22 April 2001 - 05:43 pm | | | The letter also includes references to Camilia's role in the uncovering of the "incident/plagiarism/cryptmnesia". He explains the genesis of the uncovering of it and does explain Camila's role in it. I did not post that part because at the time I did not think it was germane and I am retyping everything. Let me know if you feel it is germane and I will type it here. |
Author: Karoline L
Sunday, 22 April 2001 - 06:07 pm | | Martin.
I am in a state of epistomological incandescence that you could infer without contradistinction and with very little diegesis that my recent posting was "unhappily comprehended verbiage"!
In the field of epistomological and semiological crypto-Lacanian endeavour (where so much is said so often by so few), it is the custom to employ a paradigm of microarborification1 in which the infinity of potential haecceities must be defined within the deconstructionalist imbrication secluded within the processuality of the linguistic endeavour.
To those who would dismiss this style of presentation as nothing more than pseudo-intellectual pretentious gibberish I would simply reply -
"nugor ergo sum"
Karoline
1. "microarborification" - the act of deconstructing a wood into some trees and the trees into the smallest particles of matchwood visible to the human eye. |
Author: John Omlor
Sunday, 22 April 2001 - 06:19 pm | | Hi Karoline,
I'm sorry that once again you have not chosen to reply to anything I have actually written. But fair enough, you offer a little word play to which I am happy to respond quickly, although I would prefer that it not distract us from the specific and detailed reading I have offered above regarding your "list" and its unfortunate characterizations and its misleading and partial constructions.
I should point out, by the way, that there was not one single piece of post-structuralist or even "post-Kantian" reading in the post I recently sent about your list of questions and answers. It was simply a review of your own words and a detailed demonstration of how those words offered incomplete, shallow, careless, and misleading versions of other people's detailed and developed scenarios. And it was a statement of why I thought that your approach and your characterizations were unfair and not in the best interests of justice. It then went on to point out that you might in fact need to rely on at least one of these "alternate" explanations yourself because your own account of Tony Devereaux's knowledge of and complicity in this seems explicitly contradictory.
If you would like to go back to that post and actually read it and address my specific words there, I would happy to discuss any responses you might have.
Now, as to your charming post above.
You write:
"thank you for another very long contribution from you."
Sorry again for the inordinate length. I wanted to be fair and responsible and to treat your words with care and to re-cite them as I discussed your list in detail.
You go on:
"I am most deeply impressed by the depth and quantity of your scholasticism, whch is a tribute to the best traditions of modern academia."
Thanks, I think.
You make a suggestion, sort of:
"In homage to this and to your good self I would ask you to consider an alternative way of handling data rather than the deteterminedly deconstructionist or post-Kantian paradigm I see you favour."
Actually, you are wrong again. Although I often do read using deconstructionist strategies in my professional life, and even sometimes here on the boards, I have not been doing so here today at all. I have simply been reading carefully and with patience and with attention to detail and using good, old fashioned logic, all things which seem to me still to be sometimes horribly lacking in your own less than careful summaries of other people's positions, such as those in your "list" post I read this morning.
By the way, Karoline, I would like an honest answer. Do you even know what "deconstructionist" writing is or what this word has meant over the past thirty years? I do, and have written repeatedly on the subject in a professional capacity elsewhere. I ask you this because if you did in fact have any real familiarity with this word and the texts to which it is often attached, you could never, ever, use a word like "paradigm" in conjunction with it. The fact that in your own goofy little sentence you suggest there is a "deconstructionist" "paradigm" is powerful and convincing evidence that you are now speaking about things with which you are not completely or thoroughly or perhaps even vaguely familiar. I do know what I am talking about here. Trust me on this one. I can cite pages and pages in support of this simple point. There simply cannot be anything like a "deconstructionist paradigm." In fact, the two words are almost contradictory. There is not any single "post-Kantian paradigm" either of course, but that is a debate for elsewhere.
I do wish you'd write with some care.
But you go on:
"There is a structure and indeed a reading of most discourse, diatribes and even menus that can and indeed even might be seen both determinedly and otherwise to imply strictures upon a non-determinist view point requiring careful definition if sophism,and danger are to be avoided."
And what would these strictures be and precisely how would they be so "implied?" You offer this little gem of a sentence as a truth, but do not support it, even as a hypothesis, with any evidence of either a theoretical or material or linguistic sort. This does not surprise me, of course, since this is precisely how you have continually made your case about Mike and Anne's complicity in the forgery. But here it seems particularly lazy, since you advance a position that would require some defense if you wish me to agree with it. I should point out here, by the way, that I have not been advocating a non-determinist point of view, but rather have been calling for a closer and more patient detailed look at what precisely is evidence and what precisely is interpretation in this case and have advanced my own careful distinctions accordingly. This is actually a very old and traditional methodology and has little of a non-determinist quality about it. I would expect the same from any careful reader. Also, I am always more than happy to offer any "careful definitons" that anyone might ask for. So I do not see your remark above as relevant at all to my own work here, and I note once again with profound consternation, that you have not cited a single word I have written and yet claim to be responding to me and to have at least actually read my post above. What sort of reading and response is this, anyway?
But you continue:
"Most great positors and semiological giants (as it were) have tended to use language or linguistic construction as a means of clarification, even edification."
Well, I am certainly not a great positor or semological giant (and I know no one who would admit that they were), but I have been using language here on these boards specifically as "a means of clarification, even edification." I choose to leave it once again up to our mutual readers to determine if my words here have helped to clarify my doubts about your position concerning Mike and Anne's complicity and if my words here have helped to clarify exactly how much we do not know about this case and if my words here have helped to clarify the evidence and to distinguish it from people's interpretations of the evidence and if my words here have helped to clarify precisely why the case against Mike and Anne specifically as forgers may not be as well established as some people have claimed. I believe my words have helped to clarify, for some readers, these issues and other rhetorical questions about the diary, including for instance the question of the influence of the "Eight Little Whore's" poem. I do not know, of course, if my words have had any edifying value, but that is not my real concern here.
Your paragraph continues:
"The genius, as it were is in the perception of the link that binds the chain and not in the simple but simplistic neo-acculturated differences which might be seen to impose an artifice of chaos on a primordial simplicity."
I'm not sure that the "genius" you speak of is not in both the perception of the links and respect and attention to the differences. I think it is. I at at least have tried to both perceive the links that bind and the differences that problematize in this case. I cannot, I'm afraid, at this point say the same for your writing and I would be happy to demonstrate why and to cite the passages which would prevent me from offering your work such an endorsement. Genius would never perceive the links that bind at the expense of the problems and differences that remain. It wouldn't have in Plato's time and it would not today. If you believe that it would, this explains much about how you are able to use accusatory rhetoric and posit solutions suggesting complicity without paying close attention to the problems and difficulties and inconsistencies that accompany your own scenarios, interpretations, and solutions. This lack of recognition of difficulties and problematic differences in readings and this unself-consciousness in the name of "the big picture" is very often at the root of historical error and unfortunate rushes to judgment and often at the root of unjust conclusions.
But you contiue:
"While it might be a circumlocutory achievement to establish a paradigmal interface wherein the monochromatic spectrum might be perceived in inverse relationship to its very self,"
Once again, there is no paradigmatic (the word you were looking for, I think) interface being offered by me in anything I have written so far. In fact, I have steadfastly refused to offer any sort of paradigm for this case whatsoever.
But I interrupted you:
"and while it might be veridically possible to perform a meretricious and seemingly worthwhile discourse that will dazzle or avalanche its readers into a state of awe,"
No, no, no. I do not seek to dazzle or to avalanche. My posts are long because they are careful, but if you read them closely you will see that they proceed slowly, step by step, and unlike your own work here, paying close attention to what you have actually written and citing your own words within my response and my reading of them! I am not seeking to bury anyone with words, I am seeking to clarify by going patiently through what has actually appeared in these posts. Look at my most recent post concerning your unfortunate "list" of question and answers. Read it, please. Carefully. There is no attempt whatsoever to dazzle or to bury, there is only a slow careful even deliberately easy to follow argument concerning your unfair and grossly incomplete summaries of other scenarios and explanations and a careful attempt to restore the balance and to fill in what you misleadingly have left out of your presentation. I'm sorry if you find yourself so dazzled or buried by my actual careful reading of your words that you are unable to respond specifically, responsibly, or with any great care. I am afraid that says more about your own inability or unwillingness to read carefully and respond patiently and in detail than it does about my prose or its effects on other readers.
But I interrupted you again. Let's continue:
"it does not of a necessity comply that this discourse, even utilising the most resonant popular scholastic terminologies"
Please cite. Other than in my response to this little post by you that I am reading and writing now, I have actually used very little "scholastic terminology" at all. The sentences in my last post concerning your list of questions and answers were composed in relatively simple language and with attention to the details of your own writing, but were not in fact laden with any jargon whatsoever. We can go back and read this last post carefully and you can show me where I might have used a term that seemed to you to be "scholastic terminology," but I fear you will not be willing to address something that I have actually written with this sort of detail. This is distressing, since it implies either a lack of respect for my words or an inability on your part to conduct a careful and deliberate discussion in clear language (such as the language I believe I used in the posts above) and to respond carefully to what has actually been written, and in either case this implication saddens me.
But you conclude:
"it does not of a necessity comply that this discourse, even utilising the most resonant popular scholastic terminologieswill in and of itself, semiologically or in direct antipathy to this plenitude be in fact of any long term intellectual value even within the limited and possibly intestinal confines of a post-structuralist endeavour."
First of all, there is no post-structuralist endeavor taking place here, and I believe that if you knew the specific textual histories behind such terms you would know that. What I have been doing here is simply an example of reading and responding using old-fashioned inductive logic and traditional careful reading. And it has served its purpose both by pointing out the fallacies in your presentation of your interpretation of the facts and in prompting this deliberately diversionary post from you which addresses not a single one of my clear and detailed and referenced responses above but merely seeks to begin another discussion concerning the validity of methodologies, most of which aren't even being used here. I'm afraid this renders your critique, as shallow and cursory and without citation or specific detailed reading as it is, also irrelevant. I am sorry for this. I think your post (and, unfortunately, probably my own response here as well) has not done anyone any good at all and has not advanced one little bit the discussion concerning the diary and what we do and do not know about Mike and Anne's involvement in its creation. Unless, that is, others can see, by reading your sometimes comical and sometimes misinformed and misguided attempt to use scholastic language to dramatically demonstrate a point that I think does not relate to anything I have written, just which one of us might be the reliable, the patient, the careful, and the more deliberate reader and respondent.
I hope that if you choose to address another one of my readings of your work, you might actually say something about what I have written there and about the specific issues I have discussed and questions I have posed.
This, in fact, would be the scholarly and responsible thing to do.
Finally you ask:
"Do you see where I am coming from?"
I'm afraid that now I believe I do.
Please read my post of 12:21 pm today carefully (it's a few posts up) and feel free to actually respond to it.
Thanks,
--John
PS: Of course, I recognize the rather feeble, in my opinion, attempt you were making to demonstrate the mystifying effects of jargon and its ability to confuse issues and to distract readers and the attempt you were obviously also making to say or demonstrate something about your own caricatured version of contemporary theory (most of which has not even a single aspect in common with anything you have written here, of course, and with which I see no evidence yet that you actually have any working familiarity, by the way). I appreciate the half-hearted parody. But you also ended up sketching out a few positions, so I thought they deserved a response. I respect what other people write and I try to pay it close attention. |
Author: Martin Fido
Sunday, 22 April 2001 - 06:38 pm | | Hi Nugator - (sorry I can't find a feminine for that)!
Since that is your only aim and intention, I won't add pedantic strictures about the differences between scholarship and scholasticism, or sophism and sophistry to John's detailed analysis.
Hi Alegria,
No, I don't think Cammy's input need be gone over again. The question at issue is whether Melvin was simply asking me or the A-Z authors to find out whether the gossip he had heard was true, or whether he was offering us a titbit of defamatory information to add to another writer's entry in the A-Z. And, of course, whether in either case this was a commendable course of action in preference to approaching Bruce Paley direct via his publishers.
All the best,
Martin |
Author: Martin Fido
Sunday, 22 April 2001 - 06:41 pm | | Oh, and Alegria - more esprit d'escalier. As the early letter to us outlines Cammy as the source, I withdraw unreservedly and with apologies my implication that Melvin was claiming some sort of credit for the discovery back in 19-whenever, and sliding away from it earlier this year.
All the best,
Martin |
Author: Karoline L
Sunday, 22 April 2001 - 06:51 pm | | I don't know what Alegria has exactly but I have been sent two pages of MH's letter to Martin Fido on March 22 1996. It seems to be a long letter containing suggestions for amendations of a new edition of the A-Z
Of the extract I have, this is the only reference to Bruce Paley:
"Under JOSEPH BARNETT you might like to note that the essential thesis was worked out in detail in Mark Andrews' novel "The Return of Jack the Ripper". "This was published by Leisure Books, New York, in 1977, five years before Paley set out 'his theory'. Bruce Paley, it should be noted, is a New Yorker who used to import American books and comics. Ah well!"
Martin,
is this what you have called Harris's "accusation of plagiarism" against Paley? Is this the "derogatory information" you claim he passed on to you? or is there some other source I don't know about?
I'm just trying to be clear about what's what
Karoline |
Author: John Omlor
Sunday, 22 April 2001 - 07:19 pm | | To all readers on this board:
I apologize for my most recent lengthy point by point response to Karoline's post about jargon and methodology (the one four posts above, which I sent at 6:19 pm). If you read it closely, I hope you will see that it was a fair and patient reply to a diversionary non-response.
However, it had little or nothing to do with what we are discussing here or with the evidence in this investigation or with the search for the identity of the forger or forgers, other than perhaps demonstrating one or two things about how conclusions are drawn and how carefully certain people read and possibly sending readers back to my earlier post this morning concerning evidence and "alternate explanations" which I still do feel was on the proper topic and offered at least a useful reading of the various interpretations of the evidence. Still, my last reply was, I'm afraid, mostly unrelated to the issues at hand.
Therefore, I suppose I should not have taken the time to respond or to do so in such careful detail or to use more board space to try and explain to Karoline what I have been doing here.
It is frustrating when your words are not even read or are read and responded to without any relevant citations or even any discussion of specific things you might have said or points you might have made. It is hard to resist the temptation to reply and to point this out thoroughly and carefully and with patience and it is hard to resist my natural inclination to read other's words directed to me with care and with respect and to offer responses in the same spirit.
But, since this exchange seems to me to be becoming completely irrelevant to the case at hand, I know that I must try and ignore such diversionary posts and, in fact, any replies that do not actually read my words or respond to anything at all that I have written. I cannot promise I will be successful in this attempt at self-restraint. But I know that Karoline's non-responses and my reactions to them must be getting tiresome and proving very little and perhaps standing in the way of making progress in our collective reading, and so I will try and refrain from such further marginal discussion.
Sorry again for taking your time and attention away from what we are allegedly doing here. I now think the most recent posts from Karoline perhaps did not deserve a response, but I want to continue to respect the words addressed to me so that other people can be assured that I will respond with care and diligence and will treat their words with serious attention.
Thank you all for putting up with my too-lengthy responses to these provocations. I hope they have at least appeared responsible and respectful.
I will try to resist being drawn off topic again, and in that spirit, invite you all once again to consider the scenario for the diary's travels from Kane to Devereaux to Mike to Doreen which I have recently posted over on the College Course board.
Yours,
--John |
Author: Martin Fido
Sunday, 22 April 2001 - 07:20 pm | | Karoline,
Many thanks for the posting. As you can see, we may infer from the 'in media res' reference to 'the essential thesis' that I am right to recollect that the topic had already been broached to me by telephone.
As you say that the letter consists of recommended emendation to the A-Z, it is clear that the context is inviting us to publish the material it contains.
And just as Paul pointed out to you at length what the manifest innuendo was in the accusations made in print against Keith Skinner and Martin Howells, so I invite you to consider what you think that concluding, 'Ah, well!' means? I can read nothing into it but a world-weary sigh about the manifest sins and wickedness of an American importer with possible access to an American novel who subsequently turns up publishing a theory which had been the narrative basis of the novel.
I also note (which I had forgotten) that Melvin assumed I did not know Bruce was an importer of comic books, whereas he did. This rather makes nonsense of any claim that the letter's sole intention was an innocent invitation to interested researchers to check out from a man they knew personally where his theory came from.
Or do you hold the definite opinion that it is more honourable to pass derogatory information to a third party for them to check out or do what they like with than to make the check personally yourself?
With all good wishes,
Martin |
Author: Alegria
Sunday, 22 April 2001 - 07:25 pm | | Martin,
Considering you are chastising Melvin for reading motives into the actions and words of others allowing his opinion of what they meant to color his judgement and that is the criticism in the A-Z that is currently under debate, your above post on Mel's " Ah Well" was ill-timed to say the least.
:-)
Ally |
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